Separate but Equal: Asian Nationalities in the U.S.. John R. Logan and Weiwei Zhang. Department of Sociology, Brown University. Summary. June 2013.
This report has been peerreviewed by the Advisory Board of the US2010 Project. Views expressed here are those of the authors. US2010 Project John R. Logan, Director Brian Stults, Associate Director Advisory Board Margo Anderson Suzanne Bianchi Barry Bluestone Sheldon Danziger Claude Fischer Daniel Lichter Kenneth Prewitt Sponsors Russell Sage Foundation American Communities Project of Brown University
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Separate but Equal: Asian Nationalities in the U.S. John R. Logan and Weiwei Zhang Department of Sociology, Brown University June 2013
Summary Six distinct Asian national origin groups now number more than a million in the United States. This report points out the substantial differences among them and draws out some of their implications. Their share of immigrants ranges from under half to over three quarters; their share below poverty is as low as 6% and as high as 15%; some are especially concentrated in Los Angeles and others in New York. As the Asian population grows in size and diversity, it becomes less useful to think about Asian Americans as a single category. It is more accurate to study Chinese and Indians, Filipinos and Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese. Doing so leads to two main findings. First, every Asian nationality except Japanese is more segregated from whites than are Asians as a broad category. In fact, two of the largest nationalities (Chinese and Indians) are about as segregated as Hispanics, Vietnamese are as segregated as African Americans, and there has been little change in the last two decades. Second, quite unlike the case of Hispanics and African Americans, Asian national origin groups live in neighborhoods that are generally comparable to those of whites, and in some respects markedly better. The Asian pattern is separate but equal (or even more than equal), raising questions about the prospect or value of their residential assimilation in the future.
Main findings The Asian presence in this country was once symbolized by Chinatowns in major cities; there are now six distinct Asian national origin groups with more than a million residents. And whereas Asians have often been thought of uniformly as a single “model minority,” it is time to recognize the very large differences that exist between the Chinese, Filipinos, Indians, and other major Asian groups. We will argue that these differences are important enough that use of the census category of Asians is misleading, even though the concept of Asian is in common usage in public discourse. Each Asian nationality group is distinctive enough to be treated as a separate ethnicity. It is premature to assume that a pan-ethnic identity has eclipsed the ethnic boundaries among Asians in the United States. This report summarizes what we know now about America’s several Asian minorities: their origins and growth, trends in their location within the country, their heterogeneity in social background and economic achievement, and their pattern of neighborhood settlement. 1. The total Asian population more than doubled in two decades, reaching nearly 18 million. It is now almost as large as the Hispanic population was in 1990. The Indian population has grown fastest, now nearly four times its size in 1990. 2. Most Asian nationalities remain predominantly foreign-born, as the pace of immigration keeps up with the growth of second and later generations in the U.S. The exception is Japanese, who are only 40.5% immigrant. 3. Asians’ socioeconomic status was generally on a par with non-Hispanic whites (and therefore higher than Hispanics or African Americans). Indians and Japanese are the more advantaged nationalities, while Vietnamese have the highest unemployment, lowest income, and least education among these groups. 4. Though a majority of Hawaiian residents are Asian, the largest numbers of most Asian groups are found in California (especially the Los Angeles metro and San Francisco Bay Area) and New York. Los Angeles’s Asian population has significantly greater shares of Filipinos, Japanese and Koreans, while New York is tilted toward Chinese and Indians. 5. Although residential segregation of Asians within metropolitan areas has repeatedly been reported to be considerably lower than that of other minorities, the Chinese and Indian levels of segregation are as high as Hispanics and Vietnamese segregation is almost as high as that of African Americans. Segregation of Asian nationalities in Los Angeles and New York is even higher than the national metro average. 6. Despite high segregation, every Asian nationality except Vietnamese lives on average in neighborhoods with higher income and share of college educated residents than do non-Hispanic whites. Vietnamese are nearly on par with the average white’s neighborhood.
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7. The Asian neighborhood advantage is most pronounced in the suburbs, supporting the characterization of Asian “ethnoburbs” in metropolitan regions with large Asian minorities.
Data sources In 1990, 2000, and 2010 the decennial census included a question about race. Several specific Asian origins were listed as specific races. These changed slightly over time; in 2010 they included Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorro, Samoan, Other Asian, and Other Pacific Islander. Rather than refer to these as races, we will refer to “Asian nationalities” or “Asian national origins” or more simply “Asian groups.” In this analysis we include Hispanic Asians (about 3% of the Asian total), as well as people who identify (in 2000 and 2010) as Asian and another race. We use data for states, metropolitan regions (as defined in 2010), and census tracts (to represent neighborhoods). To measure the social and economic characteristics of group members we rely on the 1990 and 2000 PUMS microdata samples, which provide detailed information for a sample of 5% of Americans. For 2010 we draw on the one-year American Community Survey (ACS). In Table 2 a small number of people who listed two different Asian nationalities are included in the estimates for both of the Asian categories that they listed. We also describe the average characteristics of neighborhoods where different Asian groups lived, including the median household income, percent homeowners, and percent collegeeducated among residents of their census tract. These census tract data (and the population counts on which the weightings are based) are from the 1990 and 2000 decennial census tract data and the 2006-2010 five-year pooled ACS data.
Size and Growth Census 2010 (Hoeffel et al 2012) documents a growth of the Asian population in the United States of almost 250% since 1990, up to about 17.9 million persons. The Asian share of the total population doubled from 2.9% to 5.8%, still much smaller than the country’s African American or Hispanic minorities, but a much more considerable presence today than in the past, and very prominent in some states and metro areas. Table 1 shows that the Chinese remain the largest single national-origin group, now over 4 million and nearly a quarter of the Asian total. They are followed by Filipinos (who maintained close to a 20% share), now 3.4 million. Asian Indians are the fastest growing nationality – fourth largest in 1990 but now third, almost quadrupling in number since 1990, and reaching 3.2 million in 2010. Three other groups have more than a million residents, and each represents about a tenth of Asians. Of these, the Japanese have the longest history in the country, but their growth has been relatively modest (although greater than the U.S. population as a whole). The other two are Koreans and Vietnamese, both of whom now outnumber the Japanese.
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Table 1. Growth of Asian populations, 1990‐2010
U.S. total Asian total Chinese Filipino Indian Vietnamese Korean Japanese
1990 % of Population Asians 248,709,873 6,908,638 1,645,472 23.8% 1,406,770 20.4% 815,447 11.8% 614,547 8.9% 798,849 11.6% 847,562 12.3%
2000 % of 2010 % of Growth Population Asians Population Asians 1990‐2010 281,421,906 308,745,538 24% 11,898,828 17,320,856 151% 2,879,636 24.2% 4,025,055 23.2% 145% 2,364,815 19.9% 3,416,840 19.7% 143% 1,899,599 16.0% 3,183,063 18.4% 290% 1,223,736 10.3% 1,737,433 10.0% 183% 1,228,427 10.3% 1,706,822 9.9% 114% 1,148,932 9.7% 1,304,286 7.5% 54%
Differences in social and economic composition Distinguishing Asian Americans of different origins is meaningful not only because group members often speak different languages and have different cultures in their countries of origin, but also because they have such different social and economic composition. Table 2 summarizes what we know about several background factors (for additional comparisons see Pew Research Center 2013). One important characteristic of these largely immigrant groups is their nativity. A majority of Asians in every decade are foreign-born, even though sufficient time has passed for a second and third generation to emerge. The one exception is Japanese, of whom only 35.2% were born abroad in 1990. The Japanese case reflects the very early settlement of Japanese in the United States, especially on the West Coast, and the subsequent barriers to Japanese immigration through much of the 20th Century. Note, however, that the share of Japanese foreign-born is rising, not declining. Among the Vietnamese and Koreans, who were above 80% immigrant in 1990 (and also Indians, who were the next most foreign born), that share has been declining. But it has held steady for Chinese and Filipinos, and for Asians overall, as very high rates of immigration combine with relatively low fertility. One indicator of socioeconomic status is education. Asians have had very high average levels of education in every decade, led by Indians (15.5 years, or almost the equivalent of a college degree, for the average member in 2010). Every Asian nationality except Vietnamese has a higher level of education than non-Hispanic whites. Other indicators confirm the weaker economic position of the Vietnamese. One is their high unemployment. They show the highest rates of poverty and receipt of public assistance (though currently no Asian group is very dependent on public assistance). And they along with Koreans have the lowest income levels (though their median household income is only slightly below that of non-Hispanic whites). Many Vietnamese, it should be remembered, were resettled in the United States as refugees and were unable to reestablish their pre-immigration economic position.
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Table 2. Social and economic characteristics of Asian groups, 1990‐2010 Non‐ Hispanic white Asian Chinese Indian Filipino Japanese Korean
Vietnamese
% Foreign Born 1990 2000 2010
3.9 4.2 4.5
66.8 69.0 67.2
70.4 71.9 70.2
77.0 75.7 72.0
68.5 70.2 69.0
35.2 41.4 40.5
82.2 79.1 76.6
81.8 77.0 69.7
1990 2000 2010
4.9 4.3 9.0
5.3 5.3 8.8
4.7 4.5 7.9
5.6 4.8 8.1
4.9 5.1 8.2
2.6 3.9 4.7
5.1 5.5 8.4
8.3 5.8 10.6
1990 2000 2010 Median Household Income 1990 2000 2010 % Below Poverty 1990 2000 2010 Mean Years of Education 1990 2000 2010
3.0 1.3 1.2
4.7 1.9 1.3
4.1 1.5 1.1
2.1 0.7 0.8
3.9 1.3 1.2
1.4 0.7 0.6
3.3 1.2 1.0
10.7 4.3 1.8
% Unemployed
% Public Assistance
$51,860 $57,150 $54,000
$60,484 $65,151 $66,300
$59,113 $64,770 $65,000
$73,480 $80,645 $89,600
$73,146 $76,218 $77,010
8.9 8.1 10.7
13.6 12.6 12.5
13.9 13.1 13.7
9.6 10.0 8.6
5.7 6.1 6.0
13.1 13.2 13.6
13.5 13.4 13.9
13.6 13.5 13.9
15.1 15.0 15.5
14.0 13.7 14.1
$67,969 $66,040 $65,000
$50,100 $49,784 $50,000
$49,819 $57,976 $52,830
6.9 9.4 7.8
13.9 14.7 15.6
24.4 15.4 15.5
13.8 14.0 14.4
13.5 13.8 14.5
11.7 11.4 11.8
Indians’ high educational level translates into very high household incomes, about $35,000 above the median for non-Hispanic whites. Filipinos also have remarkably high median income, with Chinese and Japanese in between the level of Indians and Filipinos on the one hand and Koreans and Vietnamese on the other.
Location: states, metropolitan regions, and neighborhoods In addition to disparities in background and socioeconomic status, we find considerable differences among Asian nationalities in their geographic location. There are some broad similarities, such as the concentration of all Asian groups in states like California and New York. But a closer look also reveals important variations.
1. Distribution across states Asian nationalities are spread very unequally around the country. Table 3 lists their 1990-2010 populations in the nine states where they number more than 500,000. One state, California, by itself accounts for 32% of all Asians (5.7 million), and California also has the largest number of each of the six main national-origin groups – more than 40% of the
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Filipinos. Indians are the group that is least concentrated here, but even so nearly one in five Indians in the U.S. is Californian. California’s 14.9% Asian minority is unusually high, but it is not the highest in the country. More than half of the Hawaiian population is Asian. This is the state where the largest shares of Asians are Filipinos or Japanese (each over 33% of the Asian total in Hawaii). The other two states with more than a million Asian residents are New York and Texas. New York is distinctive in having such a large share of Chinese in its Asian population (nearly 40%), while Texas is the state with the highest share of Vietnamese among its Asian residents (20%). Five states have between 500,000 and 1 million Asian residents. These are New Jersey, Illinois, Washington, Florida, and Virginia. Table 3. States with more than 500,000 Asians in 2010 States California
1990 2000 2010 New York 1990 2000 2010 Texas 1990 2000 2010 New Jersey 1990 2000 2010 Hawaii 1990 2000 2010 Illinois 1990 2000 2010 Washington 1990 2000 2010 Florida 1990 2000 2010 Virginia 1990 2000 2010
Population All Asians % Asian Chinese Indians Filipinos Koreans Japanese Vietnamese 29,760,021 2,735,060 9.2% 704,850 731,685 312,989 159,973 259,941 280,223 33,871,648 4,155,685 12.3% 1,122,187 360,392 1,098,321 394,896 375,571 484,023 37,253,956 5,556,592 14.9% 1,459,039 590,445 1,474,707 428,014 505,225 647,589 17,990,455 689,303 3.8% 284,144 62,259 35,281 140,985 95,648 15,555 18,976,456 1,169,200 6.2% 451,859 296,056 95,144 45,237 127,068 27,105 19,378,102 1,579,494 8.2% 617,465 368,767 126,129 51,781 153,609 34,510 16,986,510 311,918 1.8% 63,232 34,350 14,795 55,795 31,775 69,634 20,851,820 644,193 3.1% 121,588 142,689 75,226 28,060 54,300 143,352 25,145,560 1,110,666 4.4% 183,392 269,327 137,713 37,715 85,332 227,968 7,730,188 270,839 3.5% 59,084 53,146 17,253 79,440 38,540 7,330 8,414,350 524,356 6.2% 110,263 180,957 95,063 18,830 68,990 16,707 8,791,894 795,163 9.0% 150,016 311,310 126,793 19,710 100,334 23,535 1,108,229 522,967 47.2% 68,804 168,682 247,486 1,015 24,454 5,468 1,211,537 703,232 58.0% 170,803 3,145 275,728 296,674 41,352 10,040 1,360,301 780,968 57.4% 199,872 4,737 342,095 312,292 48,699 13,266 11,430,602 282,569 2.5% 49,936 64,224 21,831 64,200 41,506 10,309 12,419,293 473,649 3.8% 86,095 133,978 100,338 27,702 56,021 21,212 12,830,632 668,694 5.2% 119,656 203,669 139,090 28,623 70,263 29,101 4,866,692 195,918 4.0% 33,962 43,799 34,366 8,205 29,697 18,696 5,894,121 395,741 6.7% 75,884 28,614 91,765 56,210 56,438 50,697 6,724,540 604,251 9.0% 121,274 68,978 137,083 67,597 80,049 75,843 12,937,926 149,856 1.2% 30,737 31,945 8,505 31,457 12,404 16,346 15,982,378 333,013 2.1% 59,280 84,527 71,282 18,002 23,790 37,086 18,801,310 573,083 3.0% 94,599 151,438 122,691 25,747 35,629 65,772 6,187,358 156,036 2.5% 21,238 35,067 7,931 20,494 30,164 20,693 7,078,515 304,559 4.3% 43,532 54,781 59,374 14,613 50,468 40,500 8,001,024 522,199 6.5% 72,837 114,471 90,493 20,138 82,006 59,984
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2. Metropolitan regions with the largest Asian population in 2010 The majority of Asians are similarly concentrated in a relatively small number of metro areas, listed in Table 4. This table provides data for 1990, 2000, and 2010 for metro areas (MSAs) as they were defined geographically in 2010. The extreme concentration in Los Angeles and New York (nearly 1.5 million Asians in each of these large metros) places them in an entirely different scale than other metros. In fact each of these two regions by itself has more Asian residents than any state other than California and New York. Their composition is quite different, however. Los Angeles’s Asian population has significantly greater shares of Filipinos, Japanese, and Koreans, while New York is tilted toward Chinese and Indians. Table 4. Metropolitan regions (MSAs) with more than 400,000 Asians in 2010 Los Angeles‐Long Beach New York‐‐No. New Jersey‐Long Island Oakland
San Jose
Santa Ana‐Anaheim‐ Irvine Honolulu
Chicago
San Francisco
Washington
Houston
San Diego
Seattle
1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010
Total 8,855,476 9,519,043 9,818,605 10,373,536 11,296,377 11,576,251 2,074,720 2,392,554 2,559,296 1,534,345 1,735,822 1,836,911 2,410,551 2,846,301 3,010,232 831,526 876,156 953,207 6,894,440 7,628,412 7,883,147 1,603,070 1,731,183 1,776,095 3,210,172 3,727,623 4,377,008 3,767,145 4,715,373 5,946,800 2,476,568 2,813,833 3,095,313 1,972,305 2,343,440 2,644,584
Asian 925,147 1,245,018 1,497,960 656,419 1,121,603 1,479,848 258,780 448,917 621,642 255,561 464,216 620,507 240,700 423,904 597,748 413,190 539,384 590,926 238,950 393,957 538,294 316,729 424,345 506,573 137,942 259,913 434,509 131,090 252,328 429,689 183,559 295,346 407,984 128,643 259,892 407,758
% Asian 10.4% 13.1% 15.3% 6.3% 9.9% 12.8% 12.5% 18.8% 24.3% 16.7% 26.7% 33.8% 10.0% 14.9% 19.9% 49.7% 61.6% 62.0% 3.5% 5.2% 6.8% 19.8% 24.5% 28.5% 4.3% 7.0% 9.9% 3.5% 5.4% 7.2% 7.4% 10.5% 13.2% 6.5% 11.1% 15.4%
Chinese 245,007 377,293 449,538 262,183 418,305 565,949 90,683 157,531 212,939 65,080 129,292 174,016 41,403 72,440 98,840 63,261 136,446 156,733 41,610 70,364 94,741 162,636 220,323 264,917 21,410 39,372 62,583 30,091 54,257 81,414 19,641 39,278 63,684 27,490 59,978 95,266
Indians Filipinos Japanese 43,825 219,334 129,723 71,266 296,709 138,081 92,179 374,285 138,983 132,909 72,333 37,431 279,324 112,326 44,299 339,500 139,975 48,639 21,630 77,033 21,466 60,570 123,705 30,516 103,024 160,826 33,411 20,189 61,929 26,701 70,263 88,834 35,476 123,326 105,403 36,760 15,211 30,357 29,702 30,462 60,000 41,764 45,044 89,341 48,226 861 119,921 195,127 2,390 191,393 230,044 3,497 234,894 241,290 56,127 56,524 17,813 116,522 84,613 21,244 168,630 114,225 21,651 8,531 88,547 23,681 20,800 114,433 30,243 29,915 127,053 31,539 21,876 22,228 6,514 53,179 37,790 11,185 102,369 59,160 15,221 26,611 14,361 3,999 57,191 26,641 6,484 100,125 47,926 8,672 5,023 95,161 17,827 12,145 145,132 29,028 27,854 182,248 34,574 5,914 27,884 22,835 21,404 54,168 34,728 55,574 78,498 41,355
Koreans Vietnamese 145,422 62,566 195,154 89,081 230,876 104,024 94,446 10,609 139,125 16,741 177,400 21,020 13,471 16,716 21,985 32,186 30,492 43,764 15,599 54,229 23,777 105,335 31,715 134,638 35,917 71,822 58,559 141,163 93,710 194,423 22,638 5,225 36,069 9,358 41,689 11,985 34,603 7,871 44,316 16,762 51,775 22,786 10,416 12,446 15,377 17,035 20,375 22,356 28,617 18,175 44,119 35,939 69,762 50,895 7,429 34,784 11,846 67,416 18,043 110,492 6,685 21,054 14,404 36,512 25,387 49,764 16,313 12,617 31,388 35,668 47,828 54,705
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Three of the metros with the largest Asian populations are in the San Francisco Bay Area. But although San Francisco is famous for its historic Chinatown, there are more Asians in the East Bay (the Oakland metro) and South Bay (San Jose). This area stands out for the large share of Asians in the total population: almost 34% in San Jose, 29% in San Francisco, and 24% in Oakland. These figures are about twice as large as any other metro in Table 4, with the exception of Honolulu (nearly three quarters Asian). Even within the Bay Area there is variation in the location of specific groups. San Francisco’s Asian population is half Chinese, in Oakland and San Jose it is 15-20% Indian, in San Jose it is over 20% Vietnamese. There is nevertheless a tendency for Asians to spread out to a larger range of places. In 1990 if we combine the three SF Bay Area metros, New York-Northern New Jersey, Los Angeles-Long Beach and Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, these areas comprised 38.4% of all Asians in the United States. By 2000 this share had dropped to 34.7%, and in 2010 it was only 30.7%.
3. Concentration at the neighborhood level We turn now to neighborhoods within metropolitan regions. Concentration of a group at the level of neighborhoods within metropolitan regions is typically summarized with a measure of segregation. The most common measure is the Index of Dissimilarity (D), which reflects how differently two groups are distributed across neighborhoods. As applied here it would have a value of 0 if every neighborhood had the same proportion of whites and Asians, and a value of 1 if whites and Asians were completely separated into different neighborhoods. Other measures used here are measures of exposure: exposure to whites (the percent non-Hispanic white in the neighborhood where the average Asian lives), exposure to own group (the percent of the average person’s specific Asian subgroup), and exposure to Asians (the neighborhood percent Asian). The latter two overlap; for example, the average Chinese person’s exposure to Asians includes exposure to Chinese. All of these exposure measures are affected by the relative size of groups in a metropolitan region. For example, in a metro with a larger Asian population, exposure to Asians in the average person’s neighborhood will naturally tend to be greater. Table 5 reports the average metropolitan segregation for each Asian nationality, where metropolitan regions with a larger number of group members count more heavily in the average. As a point of comparison, the average segregation (D) of blacks from whites was .673 in 1990, .638 in 2000, and .591 in 2010. The average segregation of Hispanics from whites was .500 in 1990, .508 in 2000, and .485 in 2010. The first column in Table 5 reveals a well-known comparison between groups: Asian segregation has been considerably lower than segregation of other minorities in the last two decades. It has been consistently about 10 points below that of Hispanics, and it has not changed in this period. The usual interpretation of this result is that Asians likely face less discrimination than Hispanics. They include a larger share of first generation immigrants than do Hispanics, which would be expected to result in greater segregation. But they have the advantage of generally higher education and economic standing.
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Measures for specific Asian groups reveal some very different results:
Though the overall Asian segregation from whites is .407 in 2010, several specific Asian groups are considerably more segregated. The highest value is for Vietnamese with a value of .558, above the average for Hispanics and only slightly below that of blacks. Vietnamese segregation was .580 in 1990, at a time when many Vietnamese were war refugees, and it has barely changed in twenty years. This exceptionally high segregation might be associated with other socioeconomic characteristics of this group (low income and education, compared to other Asian nationalities).
Yet the next highest levels of segregation are for Indians (.492) and Chinese (.487), whose socioeconomic position is substantially higher than that of Hispanics. Koreans (.458) also are more segregated than the broader category of Asians.
Only one nationality, Japanese, stands out for a low segregation level (.336). This group is unique in having a majority of members born in the United States, which might account for its residential assimilation. Table 5. Metropolitan Averages Weighted by the Metro Group Counts
Segregation (D) from whites
Exposure to whites
Exposure to own nationality
Exposure to Asians
1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010 1990 2000 2010
Asian 0.416 0.416 0.407 0.584 0.522 0.487 0.171 0.200 0.220 0.171 0.200 0.220
Chinese 0.509 0.498 0.487 0.572 0.508 0.471 0.115 0.134 0.142 0.211 0.260 0.287
Indians 0.476 0.480 0.492 0.685 0.591 0.541 0.022 0.046 0.073 0.091 0.141 0.190
Filipinos Japanese Koreans Vietnamese 0.497 0.409 0.466 0.580 0.457 0.359 0.468 0.588 0.421 0.336 0.458 0.558 0.520 0.568 0.655 0.568 0.463 0.527 0.585 0.473 0.436 0.495 0.543 0.432 0.091 0.107 0.038 0.043 0.098 0.095 0.050 0.068 0.092 0.085 0.058 0.075 0.190 0.240 0.135 0.140 0.217 0.258 0.181 0.185 0.220 0.266 0.212 0.209
We believe that researchers have been misled by the use of an artificial category of Asians that does not correspond well to the reality of very diverse Asian-origin ethnic groups in the United States. If a pan-ethnic Asian category were realistic, we should observe two phenomena. First, different Asian nationality groups should tend to have fairly low levels of segregation from one another. In fact a recent study of segregation among ethnic groups within the same “pan-ethnic” category (Kim and White 2010) found that Asian groups were more separated from one another at the neighborhood level than were different Hispanic, black, or white ethnicities. Our own analyses of segregation between Asian groups, not shown here, finds values of D that range between .40 and .60 – Asian nationalities are as segregated from one another as they are from whites. Second, each group’s segregation from whites should vary around the average Asian level. But Table 5 confirms that most specific groups are more highly segregated.
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If the largest Asian nationalities are as segregated from whites as are Hispanics, attention should shift from the question of “Why are they less segregated?” to “Why are both of these minorities as segregated as they are, and why is there so little change in their residential separation over time?” More pointedly, why are Japanese the only Asian group that has reduced segregation substantially since 1990? Table 5 also offers information about the composition of the average group member’s neighborhood. In 1990 the average member of every Asian nationality group lived in a neighborhood that was majority white, ranging from 52% for Filipinos to as high as 68% for Indians. Since that time exposure to whites has declined for every group by ten points or more. One reason for the decline is that the white population has been diminishing, especially in metropolitan regions where most Asians live. Another reason is that exposure to one’s own nationality group (referred to by social scientists as “isolation”) and to other Asians is increasing as the Asian population expands. The level of isolation depends partly on the size of the nationality, ranging from 5% to 14%. At the same time there is some overlap between neighborhoods where different Asian nationalities live, so the overall growth of Asian population tends to reduce exposure to non-Asians. Comparing the exposure measures in Table 5 to each group’s share of the total metropolitan population is a concise way to summarize the extent to which Asian nationalities are concentrated in particular metropolitan areas and neighborhoods within them. The national metro population is 5.6% Asian but the average Asian’s neighborhood is 22% Asian. Chinese are 1.5% of the metropolitan total but the average Chinese person’s neighborhood is 14% Chinese and 29% Asian. Comparable figures for Indians (1.2% of the metro total) are 7.3% Indian and 19% Asian; for Filipinos (1.2%), 9.2% Filipino and 22% Asian; for Japanese (0.5%), 8.5% Japanese and 26.6% Asian; for Koreans (0.6%), 5.8% Korean and 21.2% Asian; for Vietnamese (0.7%), 7.5% Vietnamese and 20.9% Asian. Asian national origin groups are more highly segregated from whites than is generally believed based on analyses of the census’s “Asian” race category. Most are about as segregated from whites as are Hispanics, and Vietnamese are almost as segregated as African Americans. Each Asian group lives on average in residential enclaves where their own nationality is greatly overrepresented and about 20% (in some cases approaching 30%) of neighbors are Asian. These measures are averages across all metropolitan areas in the nation. The US2010 Project webpages provide these data for individual metros at the following link: http://www.s4.brown.edu/us2010/DDhab/Default.aspx. Because they are such important centers of Asian population, we review here the specific cases of Los Angeles and New York, both of which diverge in some ways from the national averages.
The Los Angeles-Long Beach MSA is home to over 2 million Asians. Here the segregation from whites for the broad Asian category is higher than nationally, .453. Three nationalities have values of D over .50: Vietnamese with a startling high of .669, Chinese at .597, and Koreans at .554. The average exposure to whites is quite low, 31.5% for Asians and ranging from 25.1% for Vietnamese to 41.3% for Japanese.
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Exposure to Asians is correspondingly high, 32% for Asians and ranging from 23.9% for Filipinos to 41.4% for Chinese.
The New York-Northern NJ-Long Island MSA includes almost 2 million Asians, led by Chinese and Indians. Segregation of Asians from whites is even higher than in Los Angeles at .503. Values range from .475 for Filipinos to .598 for Chinese. Compared to the national average, Japanese, a relatively small nationality in New York, are unusually highly segregated (.544). Exposure to whites (43.2% for Asians) is higher than in Los Angeles, however, because non-Hispanic whites are a larger share of the total population in New York, and exposure to Asians (27.6%) is somewhat lower.
Separate but equal? A recurrent theme in the literature on minorities in the U.S. is that residential segregation typically results in being concentrated in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Does our finding of unexpectedly high segregation for Asian nationalities mean that they, too, are disadvantaged by their residential location? Some previous studies (Logan 2012, De la Roca, Ellen and O’Regan 2012) suggest that Asians as a pan-ethnic category fare nearly as well as non-Hispanic whites. Here we look more closely at the variations among Asian nationalities. We analyze this question using the same class of exposure measures described above for segregation, but referring now to the socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods. We ask specifically what is the median household income, the percent homeowners, and the percent of neighbors with a college education in the neighborhood where the average group member lived. These data are shown in Table 6 for the decades 1990-2010. The source for 1990 and 2000 is the decennial census in those years (Summary File 3); the source for 2010 is the five-year pooled data at the tract level from the American Community Survey (ACS) in 2006-2010. Dollar figures are for constant 2010 dollars. Table 6 reports on the neighborhood as a whole, including the incomes, homeownership, or education level of all residents, not only of the Asians in the area. The comparison of Asians to non-Hispanic whites in the first two rows of the table reveals the main pattern. Whites live in neighborhoods with a higher share of homeowners, and this disparity has remained stable through the last two decades. This finding reflects the much higher share of whites who own homes in the U.S., estimated by Rosenbaum (2012) for 2011 at 75.2% for whites but only 59.8% for Asians (and below 50% for Hispanics and African Americans). In terms of median income and educational level of neighbors, however, Asians lived in higher status neighborhoods than whites already in 1990 and maintained their advantage in 2010. In short, Asians live separately but in some respects they live in better than equal neighborhoods compared to whites. Although there are variations among the Asian national origin groups (with Vietnamese living generally in the least affluent neighborhoods, and Japanese, Koreans and Indians in the more affluent areas) the findings are similar for all groups. In the worst case in 2010, Vietnamese fall only $300 below whites in neighborhood median income, and only 2 points behind in college educated share – separate and nearly equal.
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Table 6. Neighborhood characteristics of the average group member, national metro averages
Non‐Hispanic Whites Asian Chinese Indians Filipinos Japanese Koreans Vietnamese
Neighborhood Median Household Income 1990 2000 2010 $60,722 $66,198 $65,460 $64,601 $69,131 $71,405 $65,894 $72,931 $74,340 $68,561 $72,684 $77,032 $64,708 $68,345 $69,697 $72,825 $74,790 $75,416 $67,279 $71,331 $75,241 $58,284 $62,818 $65,166
Neighborhood % Homeowners 1990 2000 2010 67.7 70.8 70.0 54.4 57.9 59.7 51.7 56.4 57.6 57.4 58.3 61.0 56.9 60.9 61.8 59.6 61.5 61.8 54.2 57.2 59.3 53.9 58.0 61.5
Neighborhood % College 1990 2000 2010 23.5 28.6 32.9 27.0 32.3 38.1 30.6 37.0 42.4 30.3 36.2 44.0 22.7 26.9 31.7 30.7 35.9 40.1 30.2 37.0 43.9 21.5 24.9 30.7
These are again national averages, and it turns out that the pattern is less beneficial to Asian groups in Los Angeles and New York where we also found that segregation is more intense (data are available on the same webpage as noted above for all metropolitan regions). Possibly in these largest areas of concentration there is greater heterogeneity in the Asian populations, so the average outcomes are somewhat less advantageous.
In Los Angeles whites live in neighborhoods with considerably higher median income than do Asians ($81,660 vs. $69,550), a higher share of homeowners (58.8% vs. 54.1%), and higher shares of college educated residents (42.6% vs. 35.7%). No Asian nationality group matches whites in terms of neighborhood income (Japanese and Indians are highest, Vietnamese lowest), homeownership (Indians are close, Koreans are lowest), or education (though Indians, Japanese and Koreans are almost at the same level, while Vietnamese lag far behind).
In New York we find a similar pattern. Japanese come closest to matching whites’ neighborhood income level; in this case it is Chinese who are lowest. No Asian nationality is within even ten points of the 65.7% share of homeowners in whites’ neighborhoods. There are exceptions on neighborhood education level, however – Japanese and Koreans both surpass the college educated share in white neighborhoods.
Asians in Cities and Suburbs One possible source of Asians’ neighborhood-level advantages is that they have increasingly been locating to suburban communities, sometimes clustering in what Li (2009) refers to as “ethnoburbs.” As shown in Table 7, though Asians lag behind non-Hispanic whites in the share of metropolitan residents who live in suburbs (68.7% for whites vs. 50.6% for Asians in 2010), the share of suburban Asians has risen from only 42.2% in 1990. Indians are the most suburban (56.5%), and Chinese the least (44.5%). To construct this table we used consistent metropolitan and central city boundaries as designated by the Census Bureau in 2010.
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1
Table 7. Percentage of Asians Living in Suburbs 1990 2000 2010 Non‐Hispanic white 64.1 67.1 68.7 Asian 42.2 46.0 50.6 Chinese 36.0 41.6 44.5 Indians 51.8 51.8 56.5 Filipinos 44.6 49.1 53.7 Japanese 46.1 49.5 51.6 Koreans 46.5 49.8 53.6 Vietnamese 38.6 42.7 50.1 1
Of those living in metropolitan regions, 2010 boundaries
Because suburbia has historically drawn more affluent residents, we would naturally expect to find members of any group in the suburbs living in relatively advantaged neighborhoods on any socioeconomic criterion. This expectation is borne out in Table 8, where we use the neighborhoods of non-Hispanic whites as a standard for comparison. In 2010, for example, white suburbanites lived on average in neighborhoods with a median income of nearly $70,000, about $10,000 higher than central city white residents. The gap in homeownership was even greater (75.8% in the suburbs compared to 57.2% in cities). The differential in college education was in the opposite direction: whites lived in city neighborhoods where 36.7% of neighbors had a college degree, compared to only 31.2% in the suburbs. This pattern reflects the strong preference of young educated adults to locate in cities until the point when they are raising families. The city-suburb differences in neighborhood home ownership are similar for whites and Asians. We don’t find much difference in education levels – except for the Japanese, Asians in cities and suburbs have neighbors with similar education. But there is a very large gap in neighborhood income levels between city and suburban Asians. For the broad Asian category the difference is over $15,000 – highest among Chinese and Koreans (about $20,000) and lowest among Vietnamese ($9200). The patterns in Tables 6 and 8 are complex, and to interpret them requires that we also take into account groups’ levels of suburbanization:
With respect to neighborhood home ownership, the more than 10-point advantage of whites over Asians is partly due to whites’ higher suburban share. Within cities the difference is just over 7 points and in suburbs it is less than 7 points. Filipinos and Vietnamese in cities live in neighborhoods with almost the same level of homeownership as whites.
With respect to education, the 5 point differential favoring Asians (shown in Table 6) diminishes to just one point in cities. It is specifically a phenomenon of the suburbs, where the Asian advantage averages over 7 points. Although we cannot be sure of the
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reasons without analyzing individual-level data, we suspect that college-educated Asians themselves have a suburban preference, which is distinct from the city preference of college-educated white young adults.
Table 8. Neighborhood characteristics of the average group member, cities and suburbs Neighborhood Median Household Income 1990 2000 2010 City Non‐Hispanic Whites Asian Chinese Indians Filipinos Japanese Koreans Vietnamese Suburb Non‐Hispanic Whites Asian Chinese Indians Filipinos Japanese Koreans Vietnamese
Neighborhood % Homeowners 1990 2000 2010
Neighborhood % College 1990 2000 2010
$55,209 $57,011 $57,430 $58,837 $59,799 $65,500 $57,977 $54,065
$59,679 $61,688 $64,543 $64,009 $63,331 $67,526 $61,087 $59,176
$58,825 $63,348 $65,344 $68,303 $63,916 $68,653 $64,752 $60,545
56.7 46.0 42.7 46.3 51.0 51.2 42.8 48.7
58.8 49.1 46.9 47.8 54.1 52.2 45.3 52.8
57.2 49.9 47.4 49.8 54.1 52.2 46.5 55.3
26.3 26.2 29.2 29.4 22.5 31.6 29.5 21.1
31.9 31.7 36.1 35.6 26.8 37.6 36.6 24.4
36.7 37.9 41.8 44.1 32.0 42.6 44.3 30.4
$63,805 $74,986 $80,917 $77,622 $70,810 $81,372 $77,982 $64,986
$69,400 $77,853 $84,709 $80,755 $73,534 $82,212 $81,641 $67,710
$68,474 $79,267 $85,561 $83,756 $74,680 $81,744 $84,298 $69,761
73.9 66.1 67.7 67.8 64.3 69.3 67.3 62.2
76.6 68.1 69.7 68.0 67.8 71.0 69.2 64.9
75.8 69.2 70.4 69.6 68.4 70.8 70.3 67.6
22.0 28.1 32.9 31.2 22.9 29.7 31.0 22.2
27.1 33.0 38.3 36.8 27.0 34.1 37.4 25.6
31.2 38.4 43.2 43.9 31.5 37.6 43.6 31.0
The most important result of looking separately at cities and suburbs is for neighborhood median income. Table 6 showed an average $6000 advantage for Asians. Table 8 reveals that the differential in cities is about $4500. But in the suburbs it is much larger: nearly $11,000 for Asians as a whole, $17,000 for Chinese, over $15,000 for Indians and Koreans, and over $13,000 for Japanese. Only suburban Vietnamese are close to suburban whites in the median income of their neighbors.
This last result has particular relevance to understanding the phenomenon of the “Asian suburb” or “ethnoburb.” We have described the situation of most Asian nationality groups in the U.S. as “separate but equal.” It is especially in neighborhood median income that Asians’ neighborhoods are not only equal but actually advantaged. And this advantage is most strongly pronounced in the suburbs, very likely because higher income and better educated Asians have a stronger suburban preference than whites. The consequence is that the suburban communities with a larger Asian presence are also unusually affluent. This is, of course, the opposite of the pattern for suburban blacks and Hispanics, who are found predominantly in more mixed income, older, and inner ring suburbs.
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Conclusion: Assimilation or Separation? A major motivation of this report is the recognition that Asians are a diverse population category that includes newer and older, as well as relatively affluent and relatively impoverished groups. Diversity also is increasing as a result of the especially rapid growth of Indians and Vietnamese – perhaps the two most dissimilar Asian national origin categories, found in very different parts of the country. We should expect, therefore, that Asians will become incorporated into American society in different ways and at different rates, reflecting these differences in each group’s experiences and social location. An important payoff of dealing separately with each nationality is the discovery that segregation of all but the Japanese is considerably higher than found for the broad Asian race category. Since these nationalities are in fact moderately segregated from one another, the relative absence of one nationality from a given neighborhood is often counterbalanced by the presence of another, and the result is that it appears that “Asians” are most everywhere. We find that Vietnamese and Chinese, Filipinos and Koreans and Indians are about as concentrated into ethnic residential enclaves as Hispanics. And their segregation is not diminishing across decades. At the same time we notice that living in separate neighborhoods does not result in living in worse ones. The opposite is the case for most Asian nationalities in the average metropolis, though not in Los Angeles or New York. It is well documented that African Americans and Hispanics are segregated into zones of disadvantage. Asians show a different process at work. One potential explanation is that despite their relatively high socioeconomic standing in the U.S., a majority of most Asian groups is foreign-born. Whether or not they speak English well, as most Filipinos and many Indians do, they are perceived by others as being a different social category. This social boundary then translates into living separately, but they have the resources to ensure that they locate in desirable neighborhoods. Another explanation is that these immigrant groups assign more value to living in an ethnic community than in assimilating into mainstream areas. Logan et al (2002) argued this point based on the finding that the most affluent Filipinos, Indians, Koreans and Japanese in New York and Los Angeles were the group members most likely to live in an ethnic enclave. In this interpretation social boundaries also play a role, but their origin is in group members’ own cultural evaluations and segregation responds to a preference for ethnic contexts. We suspect that both explanations are valid. An implication of the first, for those who believe that American society is eventually welcoming to newcomer groups, is that separation should fall over time. Up to now there is evidence of such a trend only for Japanese. An implication of the latter is that there may be no motivation for spatial assimilation of these immigrant groups, that the current residential enclaves fully meet their needs in a way that could become selfreinforcing.
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References
De la Roca, Jorge, Ingrid Gould Ellen, and Katherine O’Regan. 2013. “Race and neighborhoods in the 21st century: What does segregation mean today?” Paper presented at Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, Present and Retrospect: The work of John M. Quigley. Downloaded on May 14, 2013, from http://jorgedelaroca.name/quigley_paper.pdf. Hoeffel, Elizabeth, Sonya Rastogi, Myoung Ouk Kim, and Hasan Shahid. 2012. The Asian Population: 2010. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census Briefs C2010BR-11. Downloaded on May 14, 2013 from http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-11.pdf. Kim, Ann and Michael White. 2010. “Panethnicity, Ethnic Diversity, and Residential Segregation” American Journal of Sociology 115, 5: 1558-1596. Li, Wei. 2009. Ethnoburb: The New Ethnic Community in Urban America. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Logan, John R. 2011. “Separate and Unequal: The Neighborhood Gap for Blacks, Hispanics and Asians in Metropolitan America” US2010 Project Report, Brown University. http://www.s4.brown.edu/us2010/Data/Report/report0727.pdf. Pew Research Center. 2013. The Rise of Asian Americans (updated edition, April 4, 2013). Report downloaded on May 14, 2013 from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/asianamericans.
